From the staff of St. John the Evangelist Episcopal Church

BATHSHEBA: ME TOO?

The world’s greatest superpower is under the contrail of a fragile and insecure narcissist known for objectifying women, bragging about his wealth, and turning every personal slight into a full-blown national crisis. His ineptitude would be comical were if not for the xenophobic advisors who hood court in his administration, threatening the lives of religious and ethnic minorities with unjust laws.

Gotcha.

The reference here is actually to King Xerxes of Persia, identified in the book of Esther as “Ahasuerus.” Eventually the king gets outsmarted by a Jewish orphan named Esther and a group of shrewd resisters. (1)

Sometimes the parallels in the Bible to present day events is startling. Such is the case this coming Sunday with the lesson from the Hebrew Scriptures about David and Bathsheba.

David was “a man after God’s own heart” but was by no means perfect. The story of the rape (and it was a rape) of Bathsheba is perhaps his most egregious failing:

David did what was right in the sight of the Lord and did not turn aside from anything that he commanded him all the days of his life, except in the matter of Uriah the Hittite. (I Kings 15:5)

Uriah was Bathsheba’s husband.

Is David just another failed political leader who disappointed those who followed him? Why doesn’t God deal more harshly with David? Does the repression of women in “Biblical times” taint its message for women today? And – have to do it—what are the parallels to the present and its implications of what we must demand of our leaders? And, more importantly, of ourselves?

Lust, a rape, a murder, a cover-up, and one man who speaks the truth and changes everything.

See you in church.

Barbara

(1) Rachel Held Evans,” The Bible is literature for the resistance,” Washington Post. July 12, 2018